The Kitchen at 404 Blackaby Street, The Panels, Part 2

Of course, our kitchen had to include handcarved leather panels on the doors. That’s what I do. The process is as follows; 8 oz. leather is glued to Baltic Birch panels. This prevents the leather from stretching while I carve it and provides support when in place. I use Baltic because it doesn’t have voids which would be a wreck when pounding on wet leather. The leather is glued on with Barge contact cement. Then the design process begins.If a border line is used it is cut first. The next step is to lay out the circles with a compass. Then the flow lines are layed in with a 4H pencil. Next, come the tappers, templates of flowers, leaves and scrolls cut from leather. These are tapped onto the wet leather with a hammer. They leave an impression of the carving pattern in the leather. After the major leaves and flowers are laid in the stems stickers and stumps are drawn in on the wet leather. The steer head was drawn on paper and transfered with Mylar. The next step is to cut the lines with a swivel knife. Then comes the beveler followed by the background tool. These are small tools which are struck by a mallet to depress the leather. Then it’s cams, veiners, thumbprints, stops and mulesfeet. The last thing is the ornamental cuts with the swivel knife.

After the panel drys, I apply a coat of Neatlac and let it dry. Then I apply Feibings Sheridan Brown Antique finish. When that is wiped off and dry I top coat with Tan Coat.

The back of the panel is finished with shellac and the panel is held in place by mirror clips. these clips also allow the panel to be removed for cleaning.

Dan,I started working leather when I was 15. Since then I’ve worked in custom saddle shops and owned 4 of my own. The last few years the shop was on the ranch. I was lucky and worked with some of the best in the business over the years. I also studied 4 years of , in reality, college level art while in high school. Later, my mother took the Famous Artist’s correspondence course and I inherited the books when she was through. I gave up on fine art and went to the saddles to make up for the lack of art in my life. I’ve worked with wood since 1978 and with leather since 1962. I started to build saddles in 1983.

Now they are just wonderful. Boy what a great job you did on these. I admire your ability to do such wonderful work in leather. I have dabbled doing some leather work on wallets and such but never would get to this level..

Amazing stuff Tom. I’m from the plains of northern Texas originally and this brings back a few memories. I tried my hand at leather work once when I was a teenager. I found I didn’t have the patience at the time but it does give me a deeper understanding of just how nice these pieces are. How many hours went into them?

I wish I could show these to my grandfather. He would definitely appreciate them.

Jeff,Thanks for the comment. Each panel took from 8 to 14 hours to complete. Of course, it took me 45 years to get to the place where I could complete one in that time. After the design is laid in it is just concentrate on doing a good job but I don’t have to think about it as much as I did when I was young.

I never considered gluing my leather to the wood BEFOREtooling, but now that I think on it, it just makes sense. Leather just seems to get all bent out of shape when you tool it, course, tooling IS beating it out of its original shape!

Fantastic job! You have forgotten more than I know about tooling leather and woodworking!

God Bless,Hawg(Still plugging away at learning and refining both leather and wood working!)

Thomas that is some beautiful tooling. I’ve done quite a bit of leather work, but it’s been many years ago. I certainly never attained your level of workmanship. It’s funny, but just the other day I was going through some stuff in the shop and came across a bunch of my leather tools. It’s the only hobby I’ve ever had that I actually made money with. I used to make belts, wallets and purses – but that was back in the 70’s, haven’t touch it since. Maybe it’s time to try it again, now where did I put that slab of marble?